Ethicsgate

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Bring the Justices Back to Earth With Term Limits

Bring the Justices Back to EarthThe New York Times by Paul D. Carrington - OP-ED Contributor - April 9, 2012

Durham, N.C. - GIVEN the very real possibility that the Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act, liberals are concerned that the right-wing tilt of five justices and lifelong appointments ensure a decades-long assault on the power of Congress. This is especially likely given the relative youth of the bloc’s conservative members: an average of 66 years old, when the last 10 justices to retire did so at an average age of 78. The situation brings to mind a proposal voiced most prominently by Gov. Rick Perry during his run for the Republican presidential nomination: judicial term limits. The idea isn’t new. High-ranking judges in all major nations, and all 50 states, are subject to age or term limits. The power to invalidate legislation is, in a sense, the ultimate political power, and mortals who exercise it need constraint. So why not the highest court in the land? One reason sometimes given is that Congress could not enact strict limits without amending Article III of the Constitution, which provides that justices hold office for the period of their “good behavior.” Long lives were uncommon in 1788, so the issue of prolonged service was not considered by the framers. Instead, they simply borrowed the term “good behavior” from a law enacted by the English Parliament in 1701 to deter a king dissatisfied with a judicial decision from firing the judge who made it. Interestingly, that same Parliament has long since imposed age limits on its nation’s judges — as has virtually every national constitution written since 1789. Indeed, Mr. Perry wasn’t the first person to propose adjusting the political powers of our highest court, nor is the idea an exclusively conservative one. In 2009 a politically diverse group of law professors, including me, proposed a system that would work around the need to amend the Constitution — an extremely unlikely possibility — yet still capture the benefits of term limits. Here’s how our plan would work. Every two years the president would appoint a new justice to the court, but only the nine most junior justices, by years of service, would sit and decide every case. The rest would then act as a sort of “bench” team, sitting on cases as needed because of the disability or disqualification of one of the junior justices. These senior justices might also help decide which of the thousands of petitions the court receives each year should be fully considered, vote on procedural rulemaking, and perhaps sit on occasional cases presented to lower circuit courts.

In short, our proposal would revise the job of a justice to a more human scale and perhaps make the court less likely to impose erratic political preferences on the citizens it governs. Because it would assure regular turnover, the court would experience fewer long-term ideological swings, enabling it to better do its original job of anchoring the legislative process to the Constitution. The founders clearly intended to confer on Congress the power to define the number and role of justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number of justices at seven and imposed on them the duty to travel the nation in horse-drawn wagons to hear and decide cases. In 1800 the Federalists reduced the size of the court in an effort to deny President Jefferson an opportunity to make an appointment. The number rose to 10 during the Civil War to prevent those sympathizing with the Confederacy from doing harm to the Union. In 1937, when the court was invalidating New Deal legislation, Congress considered a law adding justices, but the bill was defeated when the need for it was eliminated (one justice unexpectedly upheld a challenged law; another anti-New Deal justice retired). If five of our present justices broadly prohibit the federal government from providing accessible health care, Congress should consider using its constitutional power again to add two more justices — and impose a reasonable limit on the length of time that a mere mortal should hold so much political power. Paul D. Carrington is a law professor at Duke.

Any proposal by the NY Times is corrupt. It wants to remove judges when they vote against their wishes and retain them when they support their wishes. What's needed is honest reporting of all the corruption and related cases within the Second Circuit and the involvement of AG Cuomo and now AG Schneiderman. The NY Times is the major enabler of NY Court corruption, by its refusal to report court and judge corruption and the malfeasance of the NY AG's.

What none of these people seem to realize is that the corruption and misconduct they are ignoring and facilitating, can just as easily turn on them. It's just a matter of time before they are going to have to have an attorney or judge get involved in their lives. It might be a criminal matter, or civil. Maybe matrimony or family court. But they all will eventually die, and then it will be the surrogate's court.

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Re: U.S. Department of Justice

April 20, 2009: We expect to have the name of a specific contact person soon, to whom information may be presented to regarding any complaint and/or information filed with any FBI agent, squad or regional office that needs re-review, reconsideration or special attention. Meanwhile, the address is:U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, Room 3266, 950 Pennsylvania, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20530 --- Send us an email request and we will advise you directly once the contact information is made available.

April 20, 2009: WANTED!! - (1) Your ignored complaints to the Commission on Judicial Conduct; and (2) Your ignored or whitewashed complaints to any New York State Attorney Ethics Committee.SEND PDF FILES TO: CorruptCourts@gmail.com

Judge to Cancer Patient: No $$ for Treatment - See Thursday, June 14, 2007 Post

In Fairness to the Courts…

It is not easy being a judge, and disgraceful that the public usually only hears about the bad judges. And while this forum attempts to expose the reprehensible acts of corrupt courts, it is important to be fair to the many under-appreciated law-abiding judges and court employees. Judges are grossly under compensated, and must rely heavily on unnamed staff who sometimes carry their own biases and improper political agendas. So let's expose and eradicate the corruption, but we are socially obligated to consider: (1) how do we get our judges adequately compensated; and (2) what specific and constructive suggestions can be made and implemented to insure the integrity of our courts. Send, too, ideas to make the courts a better system for all of us!!

Our year-long investigation has confirmed that the purported judicial "ethics" enforcer, The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, is itself a biased, corrupt group that protects certain judges while destroying others who have become targets of the political thugs who control them. Something is terribly wrong when even our honest and law-abiding judges are failed by our justice system. The New York State system of justice is a corrupt process that has all but ruined the faith of the people in their government.

Milberg Weiss

Robert R. Reed

Position Available:Another NY Judge needed to be a Hero For Future Generations -- We need another elected New York Judge to come forward and speak out about the systemic corruption within and about the NY court system. Must be willing to assist in plans to restore integrity and the rule of law back to our treasured courts. Benefits: A good nights sleep, and an opportunity to become a hero for future generations. --- Salary: None --- Details: A few private meetings with friendly Federal Agents, and one big explosive press conference. For more details, contact: corruptcourts@gmail.com (Confidentiality Guaranteed- until the press conference, of course)

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Hope in the Fight Against Corruption in Our Courts Has Arrived. Her Name is Ann T. Pfau.